Run-Away Summer

So summer begun and now is almost over in what seems like only the blink of an eye! 

The kids have spent most of the summer pootling about, playing with friends and enjoying the sunshine. I have been very busy working on a plan for next years Youth Church, (which has consumed a LOT of time & still needs a bit more). I am also picking up the Teen Girls Group and need to have some thinking time about that. I also STILL have some of last years marking to do (the big boys' work) and I need to do a little planning for this year's Home Ed - not that much will change tbh, although I will be missing one child of course :( . No need to fix what ain't broken :D

One week of the holiday was consumed by almost all of us being involved in running (or attending) our church's Pyramid Rock holiday club. It was well attended and lots of fun (for everyone), but as always with these things, thoroughly exhausting!

DD has started back at Gym and been moved up to the 'County' group ~ which means more hours and more competitions. We've decided to ease him in gently, otherwise it'll be twice the hours all in one go! Looking forward to seeing him reach his potential ~ he definitely has some!

Last weekend Paul & I were up in Preston for a friend's wedding and decided to stay overnight. Fortunately my Mum is here atm, so she was volunteered to stop over with the brood, although Bugs and Minnie agreed to do the cooking. Paul booked a rather special room and we celebrated almost 18 years of marriage with a night off! 

The next day we went for a lovely long walk together in the Ribble Valley, before heading home to the tribe! 

Bank Holiday Monday, we took the children over to Tatton Park for the day. It was more fun for the younger ones (it's hard to find things that appeal to everyone these days), but at least they all got to have another go at some archery ~ which is fast becoming a family favourite activity ~ and we did build a rather excellent den together. 

Of course, on the return to the car it refused to start! Apparently the start motor had given up the ghost, so the ranger gave us a tug to get us going and we got home OK. It's fixed now, and thankfully was paid for under warranty :D

Bugs enrolled at college yesterday, and is now the proud owner of a student card! He catches the bus for his first official day next Wednesday!  It seems they have him down to do English GCSE (sitting in June '14)  & a Numeracy proficiency class (testing Jan '14), as well as his BTEC. No big deal and at least he'll have some bits of paper to his name! I'm wondering about asking them if he can sit both in January though, rather than have to study for a whole year for something that he has effectively already achieved ("working very well at level 2 (GCSE level)" was their own assessment of his English).

I know that summer is almost done, when the swallows have fledged and gone (last week), the Buddleia is heaving with butterflies & bees on a last ditch feast, and the blackberries are ripe for picking. A couple more weeks and I'll be harvesting the Damsons and not long after the Elderberries, signalling to us all that Autumn is here... I'm never quite ready for summer to end, but I love that I have learnt, by living here, to read the seasons by nature's flora and wildlife. ;D

There's a gazillion more pictures on Flickr if anyone is interested ...

The Beautiful Bus :D

:=D

Crazy Weekend!

I'm so glad it's half term - a chance to just catch my breath a little - except not this past weekend! On Thursday night some good friends of ours (J&T, J, L&S) stayed overnight. They arrived late and left early (very early!) to catch a ferry to Ireland (from Holyhead), for a wedding on Friday. They then stopped by again for the day on their way home to Oxford on Saturday. Saturday just happened to be Taz's 11th birthday too, so the addition of great mates as visitors made his day :D We convinced them to take a walk round The Moss and the village, with a little stop at the brook and our lovely village pub - kids & all - and so, with a couple of pints down, they were obliged to stay the night again :D It was brilliant to spend some time with them. We haven't seen them since February (when we camped in their garden just after the really heavy snow). S is Lilo's very close friend: despite the miles they are soul mates. J&L are life-long friends of Bugs & Taz, and the whole crowd get on SOOO well - it is always such a joy to be with them :D

They left for home this morning at the same time we left for church (the extra hour was a real blessing this morning with so many in the house to be out by 9am!). After church we came home for bangers-and-mash (loverly!!), and just as P was dozing on the sofa (with numerous children on top of him) M&B with Taz's mate D arrived to collect something from us. M is another pastor in our church and she had some things she needed to discuss with P. Shame - he so rarely naps on a Sunday and when he chose to.... No sooner had they left when S brought back our two girls, having had them for lunch today to play with K. She stayed to chat for a bit...and as she was thinking of leaving our other expected guest arrived for the evening - our close friends H&G, who moved away just after we moved house. So they were around for the evening until about 9ish (as X-factor was finishing they left). It was lovely to see them too, I miss them so much :(

But it's been a couple of days FULL of people - I shall be glad to not have to do school tomorrow! I have Sunday School 'stuff' to do and I need to print some resources out for Stitch for next half term, plan out the week following and catch up on some marking! AND I need to have some fun with the kiddos :D I also have a pile of photo editing I want to get through for a couple of friends of mine who have been waiting several weeks now to see these shots I've taken... Where does time go?!

Forgot to blog too, that we got a new Tourneo. In the end we gained the consent of Ps M&D (while they were here last weekend) to bid on one on Ebay. It was a tough choice, but the only other one I could find on the net that was within our budget was the same age as this one, but with 25, 000 extra miles on the clock, an arm rest missing on a passenger seat, pictures that weren't as clear - and it just didn't FEEL right. I prayed so hard. This other one looked immaculate, but it was on Ebay (something P's parents do not quite trust I feel). In the end we bid and won - we got a 2003 model for just over £5000. P went down to Norwich on the train to collect it (half expecting to be getting the train home again) and it was as beautiful as I thought it was. He paid the man and drove it home! It IS stunning - silver, not a speck of rust even underneath or on wheel arches (as Tourneo and Transits are notorious for), not a scratch or a dent anywhere, the engine is clean, the inside is pristine, even with added rubber flooring to protect the carpet, the A/C works and the CD Player is GOOD! The only minus for P is that it doesn't have a headphone socket to plug his MP3 player into - poor man :( !! This car, sorry BUS, is SOOO much quieter than the last one - you can actually hear the music & each other whilst driving! It purrs contentedly under the bonnet and it's not slaving away at 4000 revs at 70 mph - in fact, it's not even working particularly hard at all! :D We are hoping now, God willing, we are set for the next 10 years!! By then the kids (maybe 3 of them) will be driving their own cars and two may be living independent lives (scary thought), so then we can downsize to a 7 seater!! :D

I'll post up some pictures when I've put them on the PC - P is on there atm and I hate loading them to the laptop as it takes forever to transfer them over to the big hard drive - much quicker to just wait a day and put them there to begin with, so tomorrow maybe :D

It got better..!

Considering the start the week had it made a pretty successful improvement. There as been plenty of hard work and plenty of fun going on here this week :D Bugs and Taz have discovered Airfix modelling (thanx to the workbox system) and have thoroughly enjoyed putting together a helicopter and a war plane, respectively. Taz blogged about his - he is pretty chuffed with it and I must say he's done a neat job for a first go.

There's been painting of the bas-relief art we made last week (they look good - photos to follow) and learning of Latin (well just a teenie bit) in History. Today we have some more to learn about our earth and some Spanish review planned for after lunch - it'll be interesting to find out how much has been remembered forgotten.

Just now Minnie, Tweetie, Lilo and DD are supposed to be playing a game together, but they are tittle-tattling to me about this and that every two minutes, which drives me mad! DD keeps complaining he is 'getting bored' and being a bit disruptive, but I want him to get the idea that he needs to see things through - and it's NOT a boring game, it's just not his choice! Stitch is of course trying to get in on the act as always and not easily persuaded to  play with anything else..!
Me, I'm hiding ;-) And contemplating what I'm going to make for lunch - and tea (Paul is out again tonight) - and thinking about the astronomy lesson later - and blogging (of course!).


We still don't know what we will do with the big blue bus. It might get to the garage today. It was the plan to take it in yesterday, but the garage we like to use is closed on Wednesday afternoons. We need to get a quote from them before we decide what to do next. I just wish we had a stash of money to go buy a nice spanking new one that we wouldn't have to spend any serious money on for a few years, but of course, we really don't!!

Busted Bus, photographs, tot-school and STuff!

I can't believe it's been a whole week since I blogged! It's not been the most exciting week. last Monday night we had some friends over for a meal and I got to take some photos of their now almost 3 month old daughter. Since then I have spent most of the week working on them to make them more professional looking. The problem with my lovely bridge camera is that is struggles indoors without bumping up the ISO too much and ending up with really grainy pictures, so if I want to gift people with my photos I have to go to work on them to remove the 'noise' (blotches) and/or lighten them - all without making them look like porcelain dolls. It can be quite difficult - and time consuming! The sooner I can save for a new PROPER DSLR the better :D

Off the subject of photography, before I bore you all to tears... On Sunday, after Paul had done a 400 mile round trip to Portsmouth on Friday/Sat to drop my Mum home (she's retired now and won't be back up here for a bit), the bus delivered us all to church and collected the drums (from elsewhere), but by the time it got back to the church again it was sounding VERY poorly and Paul had had to force it into gear :( We almost all got lifts home - just in case - and Paul crept the bus home in 2nd gear! On Wednesday our now very-friendly mobile mechanic (A) came out to take a look, but initially couldn't see the problem, so he took it for a drive down the lane - it never made it back again!! All the gears and drive just 'went' less than half way back up, so he towed it back to the house (no mean feat!) with me behind the wheel (first time in almost 9 years!). The following morning he came and replaced the clutch. When he took the gear box down the clutch fell out in pieces!! He said we had been lucky to get anywhere with it all ;) He also said Paul needs to be gentler with his left foot!! LOL Thankfully it was not too expensive a repair in the end...BUT!!! NEXT DAY... Paul drove over a parking bollard at work (because he had to turn a bit to reverse out) and PUNCTURED a wheel!! He was supposed to be coming home to take Beefy to her extra ballet practice ready for her exam on Sunday, but she never got there :( Anyway - that is all sorted now, but the car is still making a few odd noises... Thankfully we have A booked to come and pre-MOT it on Thursday and then it will be MOT later that week - hopefully it will be happier after that - for a bit anyway!! It seems to have needed a lot of work lately, but when we think how hard we work it, it is a pretty reliable car :D And so far, it has never packed up on us while we are not at home, so that's good too!

On the health front - Swine Flu reared it's ugly head at church last week (a little boy who was being dedicated ended up with it on Tuesday!) and two of my kiddos have gone to bed with sniffs and sneezes tonight, no temp' though, so I'm hopeful it is just a common cold, more over because I am on creche in the morning and two sick kids to stay home with would be a pain!!

We are now taking a break from school for the summer, but some of the kids do have few bits I want finishing off before we start again - they each know what! So I am trying to take the opportunity to make some resources for NJ. This week I made these (based on an idea I cadged from Carisa over at 1+1+1=1);

My problem with this little man is that if he does not feel challenged he will deliberatly get things wrong, just to make it more stimulating for himself. So to begin with he did this;

then he pointed out the errors -

and corrected them (that's him saying "there") -

All this totally un-prompted!

I figured that he wouldn't be able to do the plain shapes, no colours one (thinking he was primarily colour matching) and that he would likely just throw it all about and be silly, but I was wrong...

First attempt he did this

Obviously this was just right for him because he did not play the 'wrong place - naaaah!' game initially. He only did that when he did it subsequently - and then he got bored and plonked something on top of it so he couldn't do it any more - beats throwing it anyway :D

Other than that there hasn't been a great deal of organised learning going on, but pleasingly the children do seem to be picking up stuff in the school room and choosing to play with it more than ever they did in our old house. This may, of course, be because things simply are MUCH more accessible to them, but it may also be that our new box-system has reminded them that actually there IS a lot of fun stuff to do in our school room :D CT in particular has been consistently picking up a magna-doodle copy-number book that we have (I'll photograph that another day), and trying to learn his numbers from it. It's actually a very useful, fun, self-learning tool and actually, I will be pleased as punch if he learns his numbers by the end of the summer without me even trying to teach him them! Maybe this un-school system could work for my younger ones... but I am quite scared to give it a try - I'd need to do some research - and just HOW far do you let them go if they are NOT learning the basics by themselves? And with all the 'Badman' stuff and the encroaching of regulation, I'm not sure that now, after 7 years of having set routines in place, would be the best time to do a U turn and try something new! But then again, maybe I will! I have never been one to submit to something I don't agree with and I have always TRIED to shape our school around my children's needs as much as possible - it just so happened that my eldest sons were ones who very much needed/thrived on routine: One, because he struggles to function well with it (holiday times being prime example of that - grrr!) and the other because he likes to keep his life well ordered (he is neat as a pin, punctual and diligent) and it suits him well to have school that way too. Babsi would have been fine with a more casual approach, but being an easy-going, chilled-out kind of girl she is happy with routine too. Beefy would probably have done a little better in a more free environment. She struggles to keep to time (very slow and steady) and I have already seen a big improvement in her attitude to school with the arrival of the boxes (smiles more about the thought of school and is keen to see what the day has in store each morning :D). Belle, as you know, is flighty and up until now has pretty much been un-schooled anway, simply because any attempt to 'box her in' and she has frozen on me - let her out and she learns freely. I've seen it work for her - and she spends a LOT of time with CT, such that I think her 'style' has rubbed off a little! He actually is naturally much happier in routine, but he is a little stressy worry-wart, so I think any sense of failure or pressure could really stifle his learning. I'm not planning on doing a massive amount of 'teaching' this year for him anway, but I shall wait and see where his interests take us. Right now - it's definitely numbers :D. NJ is a very bright kiddo too and I am going to be stretched to keep him challenged I think, but even so, at least I can see that now and prepare myself!!

OK - that's enough - I'm tired -I've waffled - it's late! Remember to check out my my 365 to - I post the best pics there!! And don't forget to mention that you dropped in :D

And so on...

Well, of all things I had to do yesterday, I did manage most of them - quite an achievement! I did finish sorting the PM house, but didn't get to listing anything yet. I'm still hoping I might find a few more bits! I did sell the Previa (only £150, but better than nothing and better still because the guy was planning to try and fix it for his sister. I was somehow glad it wasn't going to be scrapped - dunno why!. I did clean the kitchen floor. I didn't blog or read round, but have done a bit of that tonight instead. We did all go for a drive after tea in the new bus - to the 24hr Tesco in Crewe to buy milk (just an excuse) with the kids in their pj's! It really is a bus, or a beast, depending on how you look at it, and it's really fab! Body work is really nice inside and out and nothing is falling apart. The boot is enormous (bigger than the Previa because it has more height) + the roof rack is pretty massive too :) Seats are not adjustable at all (except the driver's, which is mega adjustable in about 5 different ways), which is a bit of a draw-back, but never-the-less they are comfortable enough, forcing you to sit in an upright, but well supported position.

Mid-way through the day my tumble dryer packed up, putting an abrupt stop to my Saturday 'plough-through-a-mountain-of-washing' routine! :(#

Today, after church, P added the rails to the new arrangement in the girls' room and I spent the entire rest of day sorting through E's clothes! I have wittled out two boxes full for storage (one winter one summer), one crate full for a friend and a bag for another friend. She is still left with two 80cm rails FULL, a drawer of summer things, an undies & tights drawer and a nightware drawer! Something tells me she had/s too many clothes! The older girls have one rail, two shelves and a drawer each (A has two drawers). Am I being excessive in keeping so much? It's just that the girls just seem to have loads of clothes, but it all seems quite necessary - cardigans, trousers, shorts, cut-offs, skirts, dresses, long-sleeve tops, t-shirts, blouses, etc..! The boys clothese are so much simpler and they only have a rail and a basket each, plus underwear drawer and pj's drawer (trofast).

Now on to tackle finishing off N & JA's room, which is really just a tidying matter now my Mum has departed with all her bags (she brings soooo many bags!!). And then onto J2 & C's room, where I am trying to create a little extra space, but also store some of the toys that I am fed up of seeing in my lounge. Hmmm - it could prove tougher than I am hoping it will!

Guess what... it's now gone 1.30am again, and I never did do my pile of marking! So I am going to have to get up early enough to do it before school when the kids need their books to work in and will want to know how they did! I am too tired now though, so I need to be organised and awake in the morning - neither of which are how I would best describe myself in the mornings ever, especially after a series of hard-graft days & late nights!

Lets Try Again!

Following the disastrous episode with the Previa, which I am now selling on Ebay (3 watchers so hopefully will go tomorrow) for as much as I can get for it, we are trying again, but this time we have bought a 9 seater Tourneo. Paul is going down to Gt Yarmouth to collect and pay for it on Friday and staying over with some friends in Kings Lynn. It'll be good for him to catch up with them too as we haven't seen them in WAY too long.

It's very scary buying another car from Ebay, but is really our only choice with the money we had (our savings) and the fact that we are unable to get credit (past history) and therefore finance is not an option - not that we want it anyway. We would rather not have debt hanging over our heads these days. God willing this will be a great car for us and as it has been 6 monthly MOT'd I can't see why it wouldn't be. We won't have any money left for repairs for a while so I pray it doesn't go wrong or need anything at all until we have built up a little fund for it - which is what we have to do.

It'll be lovely to travel as a whole family and will save the added expense of me and train fares. The added bonus for us is the roof rack of course :) That was something we were thinking we might have to add for our camping trips anyway, so we are saved that expense. No tow bar, so, unless we had one fitted, a trailer is not an option, but we will wait and see how much we can pack into the bus itself! We have hired a Tourneo before (about 6 years ago my Mum drove us to Chester Zoo for the day) and it was a comfortable drive with lots of boot space, so I'm hoping for many happy holidays in this one. P says it will be a little odd to go back to manual again, but he has been using Mum's car this last week so I think he is back in the swing of it. Shame it's not an auto though - I was more keen to learn with the Previa because it was. Maybe I will just stick to letting P do the ferrying and I will stick to walking with the kids when I need to. I have no desire to drive really and the thought of driving a bus, well, it's just a bit too much for me!

On another note (and probably more important in many ways)...
JI turned 10 on Friday! It wasn't the most exciting BD for him because he didn't get much in the way of pressies. He wants a drum kit, so the deal was that all his BD and Christmas money would go towards getting one. As we don't have all the money in yet and what with the car... we didn't have the money to put up front for a kit before Christmas (as we had hoped to) :( He is mad into Gogos atm, so his day was made with a gogos sticker book and several packs of the same from various corners of his world + a 'Stig sticker book' that Paul got him as a little something to open. He was chuffed with that so generally happy enough and then today P took him and his 3 best 'mates' to see High School Musical 3 followed by a MacDonalds. So he's a satisfied lad, although the sooner the drums are purchased the better in his eyes - of course!

On my part - I can't believe I have two sons in double figures already! Where did that time go?! before I blink N will be 10 too - and I will be grey (although thankfully no signs of that yet)!

Car Update

Quintessentially our car is done for L . It turns out that the head gasket has gone and on Previa of this age it's a very major repair that will cost us over £400 to have done, so that just about makes it not worth our while as we are pretty certain there will be other things go wrong with it before too long. Maybe that's us being pessimistic, but it has cost us a lot of money already since we bought it and we do feel like the person who sold it to us knew what was on the cards, but c'est la vie - stuff happens I guess!! So now we have to decide what to do next. We think we are going to try to sell it for however much we can get for it - spares, repairs or scrap! Then we might cash in our savings to get us back on the road, but that will leave us with no reserves anywhere, so that's a little scary - and our savings really aren't that much anyway. It's a dilemma!

School's been good this week, but I'll blog that tomorrow maybe.